Erik Breuhaus (MBA '14)

An
Entrepreneur’s Education: A Q&A with Erik Breuhaus, Co-founder and CFO of
CounterFlow AI

Erik Breuhaus (MBA '14)

Co-founder and CFO of CounterFlow AI Inc.

CounterFlow AI Inc. is a provider of advanced network traffic analysis
for security operations centers. It is redefining the art of threat
hunting by integrating full packet capture with AI-driven,
streaming analytics to provide explainable insights. Its flagship
product, ThreatEye, enables overwhelmed security analysts to scale threat-hunting
operations and significantly reduce time to detection and response.

After
three years in a corporate finance leadership program at Johnson & Johnson,
Erik Breuhaus (MBA ’14) knew that he wanted to work at a startup. He joined one
while he was a second-year student at the University of Virginia Darden School
of Business, and he never looked back. Read on to learn how his experience at
multiple startups in a variety of industries, where he handled finance, operations,
business development, recruiting and marketing, prepared Breuhaus for his role
as co-founder and CFO of cybersecurity company CounterFlow AI.

Sean
Carr: Tell me about
CounterFlow AI.

Erik
Breuhaus: There’s a great quote in the industry that there are two types
of companies: those that know they’ve been hacked, and those that don’t know they’ve
been hacked. We build software for large organizations to help them hunt proactively
for threats that may not have been detected but are in and around their networks.

Our customers are Fortune 500 organizations, or managed-service companies
that help small- and medium-sized businesses deal with security. A big
challenge in the industry is that there’s a shortage of security analysts to
defend those networks. If you don’t have enough talent to throw at a problem,
you need some technology tools, and AI is a natural fit. There’s an abundance
of data in network security, so by using machine-learning analytics, we can
enhance an analyst’s ability to identify patterns and threats.

Sean Carr: How
did you come to be a co-founder of CounterFlow?

Erik Breuhaus: I was involved in a startup that fell apart,
and I found myself out of a job. Thankfully, I knew Randy Caldejon, who’d just sold
a cybersecurity company and was starting a new one, so I reached out to him. He’s
the CEO, and he needed someone to put all the pieces in place, from fundraising
to other aspects of growing a startup, and do it fast. I’d spent three years at
a venture-backed, Internet of Things systems company called PsiKick, doing exactly
that, so it was a serendipitous match.

Sean
Carr: Tell me about your other
experiences with startups.

Erik
Breuhaus: Prior to Darden, I did a leadership program at Johnson &
Johnson in corporate finance. I spent three years doing rotations and
understanding how big organizations work. I learned in the process that I
wanted to be closer to the decision-making, and startups are a perfect
fit. After Darden, I knew that PsiKick had
just raised a series A round. I decided to get coffee with the CEO, knowing
that as soon as you raise money, you need the most help. I joined the company
after graduating, and I got to be the CEO’s right-hand man. It was a tremendous
learning opportunity. When you work with someone who’s really good, you take
your learning to the next level.

Sean
Carr: How did your experience at
Darden contribute to your entrepreneurial career?

Erik
Breuhaus: The most important aspect for me was learning what questions to
ask, and also whom to ask and when. By getting a general management education,
you’re well-positioned to understand all facets of business, but you need to
take it to the next level in specificity when you’re responsible for your own
startup. If you don’t ask the right questions, you're going to go far too slow
for a startup.

Sean
Carr: Was there something about your
experience at Darden that enabled you to develop those capabilities?

Erik Breuhaus: Yeah,
it’s your classmates. Each of them is just so much better than you at something,
and it’s similar to a technology startup, where you’re surrounded by people who
are much better than you at different aspects that are important to the organization.

Sean
Carr: What advice would you give
someone who might be considering an entrepreneurial career?

Erik
Breuhaus: Learning is much more important than compensation. It’s hard to quantify
just how valuable the things you learn early are and how they can benefit you
later. At PsiKick, I was learning from others and making all kinds of mistakes,
and if I didn’t have that experience, I wouldn’t be able to lead CounterFlow
and drive it forward. One concern I often hear from Darden students is about making
ends meet. I can guarantee you, there are all kinds of ways to do that in a
startup. I see entrepreneurship as a career path. There’s always going to be
the next cool opportunity, and this idea that it’s super risky, that there’s no
fallback option, is a myth.

Sean
Carr: When you were at Darden,
you had your own venture and you were involved with the i.Lab. Tell us about that.

Erik
Breuhaus: I was really a part of a team, and I was helping a group of UVA
professors who had developed a novel technology for MRI imaging. My role was to
identify a strategy to enter the market and transition the technology from a
university setting into the world. This was my first attempt at this type of
endeavor, and the i.Lab was a wonderful experience — just the sheer amount of
available resources and people to help you.

Sean
Carr: What’s next for you and
for CounterFlow?

Erik
Breuhaus: 2019 is going to be a big year. We’re going to market with some
Fortune 100 organizations. We’re setting up for the next fundraising round, and
it’s an exciting time for me because it’s the first opportunity to throw gas
on a fire. I’m both eager and anxious, but I think the Darden education and
subsequent learning years in startups have prepared me for what lies ahead.